One Born Every Minute

This series follows the highs and lows of childbirth, filmed in the Princess Anne Maternity hospital. Obviously not for the faint hearted but at times hilariously funny.......

First Episode

One Born Every Minute, Channel 4's new fly-on-the-delivery-room-wall series, began with a long, sustained bellow of protest. I did wonder whether this might be translated as "Get that bloody fly out of here" – the transitional stages of labour not being famous for their tranquillising effect – but apparently everybody here had signed off on having this intimate moment shared with a television audience. And in the case of Steve and Tracy, waiting for their fourth child, it did occur to you that Tracy might simply have wanted an independent record of Steve's gormlessness as a partner. A policeman of 41, with a mental age of 12, Steve saw this as the perfect moment for larking around. As Tracy moaned in pain and called for the gas and air, he put on a mincing voice and reminded her of her birth plan: "I'm going to do it all naturally."

The baby had been something of an afterthought. First, Steve had had to go and have his vasectomy reversed and then, when nothing happened, Tracy discovered she needed an operation for an ovarian polyp. After that, when she still didn't get pregnant, she'd begged for one round of IVF, which had fortunately proved successful. "It was obviously meant to be," said Tracy, without a trace of irony in her voice. Now, though, she had the double whammy of labour pains and Steve's dubious sense of humour. She handled the latter with startling forbearance. Steve thought she was being "nobby and aggressive" when she asked him (quite mildly) to stop patting her back with an inflated surgical glove. I thought he was lucky that she didn't bite him. Down the corridor, Lisa was still absorbing the fact that her baby was on its way 11 days early. "I haven't washed the cot blankets," she said suddenly, interrupting an inventory of parental anxieties that stretched so far into the future that it even encompassed whether her unborn's son's unborn children would look after him in his old age. Tracy, meanwhile, was squeezing in a quick pee between contractions, unaware that Steve had tip-toed across the room and was trying to unlock the bathroom door with a coin, to reveal her in flagrante.

No, no no no no no...babies are NOT interesting (unless your cuddling one), Birth is not beautiful, its messy and noisy and full of moaning and a pregnant woman is not radiant, she's hot, sweaty and uncomfortable...